It is a matter of goals. The private sector has simpler goals — be it to build a better PC, sell the most hamburgers, or invent the best lipstick - a private firm can easily mold its corporate profile and corporate strategy toward that one goal. It is also easier to formulate a budget around these goals and objectives. Communicating this to the general public is therefore easier for the company CEO.
Complex missions
The government, on the other hand, may adopt broad, aspirational goals — such as easing poverty, raising GDP (gross domestic product) — but there are myriad of other concerns that can conflict with each other. How does one ease poverty and raise GDP at the same time, given finite resources?
One set of strategies may lead to easing poverty sooner but would slow GDP growth, while another might do the opposite. Should P100 of the budget go toward more classrooms so more poor kids can get an education, or should it be spent on building an extra kilometer of road so the harvest of the kids' parents can get to the market sooner?
Another matter is the shareholder. Typically for a private firm, the majority shareholders tend to vote alike and have similar objectives – profits, more dividends. Communication between management and shareholder is therefore easier. Transparency becomes essential because shareholders want information.
Government regulators also enforce strict disclosure rules for private firms to protect stockholders. Moreover, greater transparency helps management attract more investors or potential buyers to their business. Public listing of companies is a major push for more transparency, as it subjects companies to even higher standards of disclosure and accountability.
When priorities collide
In government, there is also pressure for transparency, but how to achieve it remains a challenge. While agencies and the bureaucrats may all be working for one government, each agency also has its own particular mandate. And sometimes, how an agency may want to attain its objectives (expand the LRT system, for example) may run counter to how other agencies may want to achieve theirs (there should be another toll road on that right-of-way access instead!).
Witness how fiscal and monetary policies can sometimes clash over interest rate decisions, or how growth objectives may conflict with efforts to manage inflation. For the most part, conducting public discourse in the interest of transparency is beneficial for the country. But certainly, a public debate can also degenerate into public bickering which puts into doubt the maturity and credibility of professional managers.
The areas where the government most needs transparency are in the release of government statistics and in the conduct of project evaluation and project execution. Bidding for public projects requires a lot of transparency, and so do procurement policies and practices.
Fighting opacity with systems
Thus, electronic bidding and procurement procedures go a long way toward dispelling the opacity of public decision making and the temptation to commit corruption. Transparency in procurement and project execution will prevent making government project implementation look like a grocery list of snacks.
On the matter of statistics, having a release calendar ensures that statistics would be released on time and within set deadlines. The closer the release date is to the period for which the report is being made, the better for everyone. Thus, the challenge is to improve over time on the compilation methodologies and statistical methods for reporting so that information to the public can be released immediately.
Equally important is to maintain the credibility of the statistics agencies and to respect their objectivity. Hindi puwedeng sabihin nabibili lang sa Quiapo ang government statistics. (You can't say that government statistics can just be bought in Quiapo.)
Media as transparency partner
Lastly, learning how to deal with the press has the merit of keeping actions in government more transparent. But the press must also know how to do their job - background info, learning the jargon, and in the case of the DOF-BSP ( Department of Finance - Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas) beat, understanding a modicum of economics and finance.
Intelligent press people asking intelligent questions keep the government on its toes, and intelligent as well. Obfuscation is more difficult in the face of clear and incisive questions. The more persistent reporters are, the better for the government and the Filipino people.
Ms. Habitan served as Assistant Secretary of the Department of Finance where she became a career bureaucrat for 44 years immediately after graduating with a degree in Business Economics from the University of the Philippines. She has a masters degree in D
